What Is Gregg Shorthand and How Does It Work?

Here's the whole idea in one question: with the way you write now, how few letters do you actually need to understand a word?

Knee → N-E
Knight → N-I-T
Colonel → K-R-N-L

Longhand is full of silent letters and duplicate sounds spelled a dozen different ways. Take the sound "F":

Face → F
Phase → Ph
Cough → gh

Three spellings, one sound — and longhand forces you to memorize all three. Gregg shorthand doesn't. Every sound gets exactly one symbol, so you write only what you actually hear.

One sound, one stroke. Nothing extra to memorize, nothing silent to guess at.